Wearing my striped PGA shirt, Old Navy khakis, and fedora, I walk over to the Starbucks at 55th and Woodlawn and meet Raff, philosophy major born and raised in Pittsburgh, getting off the bus. As we walk in, I suddenly realize that a little coffee shop would have been great for a meeting for two, but…an unestimable number is rather different. Then, as more of us wander in, it turns out there's a picnic bench in the back, and people are there reading Freud, Mika in charge already.
Three hours later, we've held a mini-Campus Days for about one-third of the program. I'm reacquainted with Danny, the personable Bostonian with slicked hair who acts like life is a giant stand-up routine…and who remembers our conversation regarding Boswell from all those months ago, which makes me that much more delighted to see him again…and Julie, as kind and winning and quietly knowing and supportive as ever. And I meet and re-meet people, many of whom were surprisingly NOT here back in April, and we trade academic stories and miscellany and thoughts on Obama's health-insurance plan and frustrations with Freud. I drink a coffee Frappucino light and meet Bill, who wears a cool tie, Karen, who reminds me of Lisa and loves James Joyce and has a sick husband, Abby, a dancer from KENT, Pete, who's never missed an episode of Lost, Artemis, a Brooklynite whose age I don't know but who cheerfully admits to being the eldest in the group, and even Amelia from Austin Texas, who looks nothing like my creation and lives in a basement apartment with her fiancé and two dogs, and Anna who makes every sentence seem like the funniest thing ever…I could go on…
A detour to show people around and talk ethics with Raff, and then five of us take the Metra to Van Buren. Julie and I laugh about how every time we meet up in Chicago we travel together. Joining us this time, and taking the permanent place of Katharine who won a fellowship to stay in Iowa…congratulations and I'll miss you!...are Alex from Michigan and Bowling Green (!), film, Jess from Minnesota, feminist theory, and Ashley, also from Austin, English and dance. Both Jess and Ashley are redheads, and Ashley looks like Nicole Kidman in Practical Magic, so they and Julie make good company…although I talk to Alex about film most of the way on the train.
The Art Institute of Chicago's free Thursdays are beautifully packed, and we see the modern and Impressionist galleries over 100 lovely minutes. Nighthawks. American Gothic. Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grand Jatte. A room full of Monets I'll be coming back to in winter. And in an exhibit which would have delighted my Mom and Dad and is just about to close, a history of wine storage and glassware with accompanying art from the Greeks to the Dutch masters to Hogarth to Neiman. Casks, 18th-century bottles, urns, the most beautiful punch bowls and ewers I've ever seen, the greatest Murano and Morani there is, and an astounding all-glass still life of a table full of spillage. I don't even get back to the Thorpe Miniature Rooms but we have a great time. Julie is the most passionate art lover I've been to a museum with thus far…she keeps falling behind the rest of us as different things transfix her, and Ashley and Jess love Monet and company as much as I do.
By now we're starving, and we're a few short blocks from the Berghoff, the 100 year-old restaurant which is just a little pricy but we figure we'll splurge one night. We toast to the year with water and Pepsi and talk about what classes will be like, what the future will be like, what we know we can do. Judging that cooking with your own beer will be a good sign, I have an excellent, just-the-right-amount battered cod with sweet potato fries and fruit coleslaw. Ashley is a vegetarian and she is the last to finish a delectable Iceberg wedge. I clue the others in to the books on sale at the store, but over a back-to-the-Metra talk about bridge and mah jong and Texas Hold 'Em, I look at the programs in Alex's hand and realize I left them and the hat under my seat. We retrieve them and nobody cares…but we miss the train by a minute and have to wait forty for the next one, passing the time by discussing movie musicals and the hauntingness of Cabaret in a slowly-filling station.
On the train back to Hyde Park, a giant black man sees me, waves, and makes his way next to us, so I spend ten minutes having my hand vigorously shaken by Lamont from Ivanhoe as he shares that he's going home to smoke a blunt while watching the porn tapes he got for his birthday! And he has Old Country Buffet coupons!
Jess lives near me, so I walk her home under the moonlit Hyde Park night, keeping on her purse side the way Mommy told me, both of us gently reassured by a fine day and night of friendship that we did the right thing in coming here.
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